Home away from home..

Its been a good weekend break so far. Managed some good runs in Kamati garden Baroda, I was focused on improving my pace, as this garden provides me 1k and 2k loops where I can run at a constant pace without breaks.

But yes there is no getting away from stray dogs in India, they are omnipresent. But thankfully these were very friendly and non violent stray dogs, who mind their own business.






Over the last couple of weeks I have been asked quite a few questions on Micoach, so I decided to click some pictures, to help explain my answers in a better manner. So here go the FAQs on Micoach gathered from Twitter & Buzz.


this give you an idea on the size of the devices. I have used my regular running glasses to help put things in context.


The main micoach device (the heart of the device) can be clipped easily to your shorts or to the arm band carrying the Ipod/Mp3 player.



This is to explain how the HRM is strapped on. It has two buttons to strap the elastic (which includes the Heart rate readering sensor).


The stride sensor (pedometer) is clipped onto the shoe lace (one does not need to remove the laces to install them), this sensor can also be installed into the cavity of certain Adidas shoe models (similar to how Nike+ works)

back to regular running

Managed over half a dozen runs over the past two weeks. Its been quite a task juggling cycling and running. I definitely like and enjoy running more, but cycling is so much convenient for getting to work (plus the fact that I can sleep that extra 30mins if I am cycling), makes it really hard to run to work on weekdays. Weekends are a different story as I don't have any deadline and can wake up comfortably (plus lounge & laze around) and still manage a comfortable run.

Micoach provided the required extra excitement and motivation. For starters I was able to get my discipline back, trust me it’s really hard to bring forward your morning wakeup time by an hour. It affect the entire day both ways, your morning work productivity and night sleep time and hours of sleep.

Being a gadget freak, I can be quite activity engaged with a gadget for more than a few days and Micoach has lived up to expectations. For starters it provides more inputs and features than its direct competitor Nike+ and provides accuracy in terms of distance which comes close to a Garmin and Iphone Runkeeper app. I hope Nike wakes up and launches the advanced version of Nike+ which currently only has a stride sensor integrated to an Iphone/Itouch app.

I have never really understood the way the Polar or Micoach calculates the exact distance (my assumption - the stride sensor provides the number of strides, they have my height as a parameter which assumes the length of my legs & length of strides from some research report) and calculates the distance travelled), this sort of approximation is more than enough for a distance runner, though a GPS based calculation will obviously be more accurate.

I have synced all my runs to the online module of Micoach on www.adidas.com/mycoach and analysed my performance on various parameter. The obvious irritant is the short break I have to take due to stray dogs and signals (as I run on a highway with intersections), this not only disturbs my rhythm but also messes up my average on most parameter (avg speed, heart rate, stride per minute, etc)

I have also found the heart rate monitor reading quite insightful, though I am not sure what I should do to correct or improve it. I manage to hit the red zone quite often, its when the heart rates goes beyond 168 in my case (find it hard to believe that I manage to hit 180 quite comfortably!), I need to monitor my heartrate over a longer run preferably something around 20km. I have a feeling on longer run I will tend to be on the yellow zone.

The graph on the link below will explain what I am trying to say, wrt the Red zone issue.







Micoach stride sensor, strapped to my shoe laces

Great week in the making

Its been a great week so far and in all likelihood it should stay the same way. I successfully managed two weekday runs with reasonable ease. I ran on Tuesday and Thursday mornings to work. I did the two 10.5km runs in about 1hr 7mins 30sec and 1hr 6mins respectively. Today's run was the smoothest (for the last 2 months) as I was able to manage it comfortably without having to walk in between, the rhythm seems to be coming back (hope I have not spoken too early). Though the in between waking does not really affect timing, it does take the sense of fulfillment out of the run.

It rained in the evening on both the days when I ran, which ensured that the run was in very humid weather. These are pre monsoon showers, the monsoons is due sometime mid June. But its a welcome relief from the high temperatures of the last few months.

I am looking forward to my first biking trip, plan to do a 20km run. I hope it does not rain tomorrow, last thing I need is a slippery road when I am riding a bike after a long long time. I have my riding gear in place, so it should not be much of a problem. After cycling, I hope to go for a swim to try and get things going and finally end the week with a run tomm., with a 13km run.